WIthout undue cruelty; were at the gates of Baghdad-it was already too late for the rosy scenario of the cakewalk conser- vatives. It's possible to think of ways that this sandstorm of steel might have been averted. (The French proposal for delay followed by reproach was contemptibly unserious, but the idea of "coercive in- spections"-which, as promoted for months by Jessica Tuchman Mathews, the president of the Carnegie Endow- ment for International Peace, would have entailed greatly expanded teams of in- spectors, empowered to create "no drive" as well as "no fly'" zones and to call in air strikes-was worth trying.) If war was truly unavoidable, it's possible to imagine routes to it that would not have forced us to fight alongside only a single meaning- ful ally and against the wishes of the peo- ple of nearly every country on earth. It's too late for all that no It's too late for no war; it's too late for a different war; it's too late for an alternative war. And it's too late to accept any outcome that does not involve the fall of Saddam. Those of us who opposed this war or who simply had doubts about it or who thought It had to come but were dismayed by the diplo- matic and institutional wreckage its com- ing has wrought now have no alternative but to hope for a quick and victorious end. But it still matters how the Battle of Iraq is fought. And it still matters, more than ever, what will follow -Hendrik Hertzberg ON THE MAT RUMMY MEETS HIS MATCH E very March, on the occasion of the N.C.AA. wrestling championships, serious matmen abandon their desks and their wives for a few days and gather to reminisce about rapid weight loss and sweaty entanglements on the plastic- covered horsehair. At this year's tourna- ment, in Kansas City; the sport's elder statesmen had a particular lanky old grap- pler on their minds: Don Rumsfeld. Fifty years earlier, as a Princeton undergradu- ate, Rumsfeld, who is now, of course, the Secretary of Defense, fought a match that is legendary among wrestlers not so much for what it augured about a ca- reer in public service or a style of con- ducting Pentagon briefings as for what it said about the man as a wrestler. "It was in 1953, the Eastern Intercol- legiates, at Princeton, and the weight class was a hundred and fifty-seven pounds," Phil Harve}; a Class of '55 wrestler for Cornell, recalled. "E very- body assumed that in the finals our Ken Hunt, who had had an undefeated sea- son for Cornell, would meet a kid from Syracuse named Ed Roone}: But in the semis, 10 and behold, Don Rumsfeld knocked Rooney out of the tournament. It was a huge upset." Among his Princeton teammates, Rumsfeld had earned a reputation for quick takedowns. He was an avid practi- tioner of the fireman's carry: ("You acm- ally picked the man up off the mat, like a fireman carrying somebody out of a house," Harvey said. ' d then there was this spinning motion you'd do, where you'd chuck him over your head and bring him down to the mat.") But, amid the tougher competition at the Easterns, Rumsfeld stood out for his su- perior conditioning and his fierce deter- mination; he was relentless, a bulldog. Ed Rooney was what is known as a leg wrestler, attempting to tie his oppo- nents up below the waist and then over- power them. At Dillon Gym that da}; Rumsfeld, cheered on by his :&iends :&om the Cap & Gown eating club, shrewdly kept his distance. Ed Rooney has since died, but his son, Jim, who made the pil- grimage to Kansas City in his stead, re- called, "My father fell behind in that match and was trying to catch up. And basically he spent the last three minutes chasing Don Rumsfeld all over the mat." Final score: Rumsfeld 6, Rooney 4. The championship bout took place later that night, with Rumsfeld, in his orange-and-black togs, squaring off against Ken Hunt. "I'd sort of forgotten about it until Rooney's son contacted me," Hunt said the other da}; :&om his home, in North Carolina. "The gym was packed-people were right down on the mats, almost like the kids at Duke bas- ketball games. It was quite a jovial get- together. But Don was quite serious. Even in those days, gosh, he was a very . " Intense guy. Hunt said that, in contrast to Roone who was aggressive :&om the start, he liked to "try to get other wrestlers to make a move first, and I'd react, and just count on my speed to WIn " The strategy seemed to work well against Rumsfeld. "He would go in for this so-called take- down, and see that he couldn't get it, and as he backed o that's when I would go in and take him down WIth an ankle pickup," Hunt said. "I took him down \ / A/ , Donald Rumsjèld three times with that, and that was six points right off the bat." ("Rumsfeld was the kind of wrestler, you knew what he was going to do and he'd do it anyhow," Don Dickason, a Cornell teammate of Hunt's, said.) Still, Rumsfeld wouldn't give up. "Kenny was an amazingly slick wrestler, just as smooth as can be," Harvey said, "but Rumsfeld was obviously in much better condition." "I think 1 was ahead eight-zip or eight-two," Hunt said. '1\nd then 1 began to run out of gas. I had the feeling that he could taste blood, you know; if he could get me real tired-and I was getting tired." In the third period (there are three to a match), Rumsfeld began "revers- ing" Hunt. "He exploited every possible tool," Hunt said. "1 think we rolled into the spectators at one point." "It was just a thing of beauty; where there'd be a move and a countermove and a countermove," Dickason said. "In a way, it didn't matter who got the final points. It was just that both guys were so good." "I :&ankly don't remember the end of it," Hunt said. "One of my best :&iends :&om high school was at the edge of the mat there, and I remember him saying, THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 14, 2003 27